Introduction: The Western Perspective of Literary Canon
To deal with canon means to investigate a wide range of works of literary criticism
involved in the century-old debate around the idea of an aesthetic principle. For this
reason it is more appropriated to consider this brief investigation as
théories de la
connaissance
,
1
to quote Shaeffer’s words, rather than a work of literary theory in a
strict sense. Actually, the Fukushima literary responses appeared in the last few years
brought scholars attention to recognise the importance of defining the canon of the
“literature of the catastrophe” although works of literary criticism are still a few and
the configuration of a canon is still out of the weeds.
The first approach to what is simply reffered to as “canon” or “classical canon”
2
owns
its credits to the Greek artist Polikleitos and his sculpture known as
Doryphoros
(440
bC) which represents author’s attempt to demonstrate by visual art the accuracy of his
written treatise entitled
κανών
(
Kan
ṓ
n
, translated as "measure" or “rule”):
3
an
explanation of Polikleitos’s own view of harmonic and well-balanced proportions of
the human body in the sculpted form. The
Canon
, then, assumed the connotation of a
standard system of rules required in the creation of a perfect and sublime work of art,
accepted as social convention. This “classical” or “aesthetic ideal” was soon applied
to all artistic productions, including the literary field.
According to Massimo Onofri,
“Readers’s tastes, critics’s judgements, historians’s works of reconstruction, are all
factors that actually contribute to the constitution of the literary value.”
4
But it is
slightly more complicated than that. First of all, what “readers’s tastes” represents is
the point of view of the reception of the artwork. Literary tastes can change in relation
to the historical period, political background, social environment and so on; that
means that the canon, from a reader point of view, can change rapidly and differs
widely from country to country. Moreover, a shift in themes and trends can be
individuated among authors too, as the formation of literary
écoles
or
mouvements
proved.
5
Secondly, the “historians’s works of reconstruction” refers to the work of an
established authority: Roman Church (see Middle Age), a political group (see any
totalitarian system and its censorship) and more recently, the publishing companies
who answer to only one imperative, the one of profitability, are all examples of
institutions in charge with interests in maintaining a particular canon alive. In the first
case, the canon assumed the function to legitimise the political power thorough
literary codes; in the second case, the canon is a mere definition for marketing
purposes. What “reader’s tastes” and “historians’s works of reconstruction” both
underline is that the canon can be no more considered as a fixed standard of rules but
a flexible system instead. In the Japanese editorial world the literary production
labeled by John Whittier Treat as
tsukaisute
使い捨て
(“read and throw away”)
1
Shaeffer, J-M. (1983). Du text au genre. Notes sur la problématiques générique. In Genette, Jauss,
Schaeffer, Scholes, Stempel, Viëtor,
Théorie des genres
(pp. 179-205). Paris: Points Essais.
2
Developed during the Greek high Classical Period (400-450 bC) the term “canon” assumed the
attribute of “classic” (often referred to simply as “the classic(s)”.
3
Stewart, A. (1990).
Greek Sculpture: An Exploration.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
4
Onofri, M. (2001).
Il canone letterario
. Bari-Roma: Laterza (p.8). My translation.
5
Actually the Italian term
corrente letteraria
(“literary stream”) is to be preferred to address groups of
authors, poets, novelists or journalists, who share the same aesthetic ideal or conception of literary
production. See Vercier, B, Maurel, A. (1994).
La critique.
Paris: Éditions du Hachette (p. 31).
literature
6
serves as an example. The term is used to address the literary production of
authors like Yoshimoto Banana and Murakami Haruki, just to name a few, whose
works are highly demanded by the public. The success of these literary pieces of art is
explained by the quality of being products for leisure and entertainment only, a
caracteristic that arises doubts about their literary value, the last aspect of Onofri’s
statement. According to Jean-Paul Sartre
7
all artworks are inestimable because they
are the result of a free creative act in terms of
liberté/gratuité
. Unfortunately, for
Sartre this also means that this creative act is always useless (
inutile
) except for the
focus on the engagement, the authorial commitment in the act of writing. This
position was strongly criticised by Roland Barthes, stirring up the famous Sartre-
Barthes debate around literature. As for Sartre, the act of writing is not neutral
because words have the power to change the state of things. Even silence is not a
neutral choice because its value is measured by the absence of words; as to say,
whatever an author decides to write or not write, he is still taking a position in front of
a particular matter and it is exactly this stance that qualifies the author as such,
because it is his responsibility to denounce and accuse acts of useless violence.
8
This
comittment turns to be an
impératif moral
towards writing itself and towards the
public in terms of assuming all the consequences that the act of writing entails.
9
From
this perspective, the
beaux arts
are a product of author’s engagement. This is totally a
different approach compared to the one of Barthes: the
beaux arts
answer only to the
plaisir
or
jouissance
, the simple pleasure aroused from the act of reading.
10
And this
pleasant feeling is perceived precisely because the literary work itself was written
with pleasure which makes the author similar to an hedonist. No engagement is
required in Barthes’s theory: the aesthetic principle “l'art pour l'art” (“art for art's
sake”)
11
is the only rule to follow. The success of a piece of art is then originality,
singularity or something perceived as anew (actually Harold Bloom echoed Barthes in
regards to this philosophy, see his
Western Canon
).
12
This different point of view
concerning the literary engagement is a very thorny topic when trying to define the
“literature of the catastrophe" as a canon in itself. To proceed with the last review of
Onofri’s statement concerning the “critics’s judgements” it is useful to take advantage
of Andrea Bernardelli’s observations remarking two different approaches to the
literary criticism: one, defined as “descriptive function or
ex-post
function” consists in
an historical attempt to describe a map of literary genre; the other one is the “pre-
scripted modality” or
a priori
modality: a subordination of the work of art to specific
rules; in other words, the author himself brings his work in line with a particular genre
or trend.
13
In addition to that, according to Innocenti the first approach is diachronic
or atemporal because it attempts to establish a large-scale evaluation system valid all
time, with a retroactive effect; the second one, on the contrary, can be considered as
6
Treat, J. W. (1993). Yoshimoto Banana writes Home: Sh
ō
jo Culture and the Nostalgic Subject. In
The
Society of Japanese Studies
, 19, 2 (p. 357).
7
Sartre, J.P. (1985).
Qu’est-ce que la littérature?
Paris:
Éditions du Gallimard. This concept and the
following ones are repeated several times in the essay.
8
Sartre, J.P. (1946).
La Responsabilité de l’écrivain.
Paris: Éditions du Verdier (p. 56).
9
Benoît, D. (2000).
Littérature et engagement.
Paris: Éditions du Seuil (p. 47).
10
Barthes, R. (1982).
Le plaisir du texte.
Paris: Éditions du Seuil. This concept and the following ones
are repeated several times in the essay.
11
Slogan credited to the French literary critic Théophile Gautier (1811–1872).
12
Bloom, H. (1995).
The Western Canon: the books and school of the ages
. New York: Riverhead
Books.
13
Bernardelli, A.
Che cos’è l’intertestualità
. Roma: Carocci Editore (p. 43). My translation.
synchronic because answers to the current trends.
14
This academic work is referring to
the first one, of competence of critics.
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